Tory-Lib Dems tell copyright industry to pay costs of pursuing unlicensed files

Ah, if only David Geffen had thought to invite a couple of Lib Dems onto his yacht, maybe things would have been different. The coalition have told the copyright industries they'll have to bear most of the costs for pursuing unlicensed filesharers.

ISPs will only be made to pay the costs of notifying their customers; 75% of the bill will be passed to the people who care about the copyright.

However, the government's decision today, based on a consultation on the cost-sharing proposal, said that the argument to split detection costs had been rejected as a "business as usual" bill for copyright holders.

"This argument was rejected as the initial proposal to share costs 75/25 was made in the full knowledge that copyright owners did have these separate costs to bear," said the government. "At the level of the individual copyright owner the level of detection activity (and any legal action) is a matter for them. It was considered these were largely 'business as usual' costs that copyright owners would face as part of protecting their own copyright material."

In a related decision, citizens won't be forced to pay a fee to appeal against one of these proceedings:

"As a free system risks the possibility of large numbers of unnecessary appeals, the government will monitor the situation closely, and reserves the right to introduce a small fee at a later stage," the government added.

This puts me in a horrible position of thinking that the coalition have made a good decision. Better if they'd scrapped the whole idea of snooping and letters, but it's a start.

You can tell its a good decision, because the copyright industry is squealing about how it's soooooo unfair:

"We continue to believe that ISPs should bear a greater proportion of the costs of communicating with their customers about illegal peer-to-peer use on their networks," said a spokesman for the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI), which represents the UK's music companies.

"We will work closely with the government and Ofcom to ensure that the costs framework overall is workable and affordable, in particular for small labels, and that the Code can be swiftly implemented."

Won't it cost what it costs?